Jan. 21, 2013
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President Obama takes the oath on Sunday / Getty Images

by By David Jackson, USA TODAY

by By David Jackson, USA TODAY

President Obama's second inaugural address Monday is aimed at the history books, but it is also part of a two-speech plan to push his second-term legislative agenda.

Part 2: the State of the Union Address Feb. 12.

"We view these speeches as a package," senior Obama adviser David Plouffe told the CNN program State of the Union, one of his four television appearances Sunday.

Monday's inaugural address will be more thematic, a speech in which the president will discuss "how our founding values and visions can still provide us a guiding pathway in a changing world," Plouffe said on Fox News Sunday.

Obama, in brief remarks Sunday evening at an inaugural reception, didn't offer much of a preview of Monday's speech. "There are a limited amount of good lines, and you don't want to use them all up," he joked.

The inaugural address will include a call for national unity and a plea for political compromise. Plouffe said Obama will make the point "very strongly" that "people here in Washington need to seek common ground."

Obama, whose team has converted its 2012 campaign organization into an issues advocacy group, will encourage average Americans to get more involved in the political process, Plouffe said.

The State of the Union speech, three weeks from Tuesday, will include "details and blueprints" for the president's second term, Plouffe said.

That agenda includes debt reduction, a gun-control package, an immigration bill and completing a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Obama was officially sworn in for a second term Sunday. A public ceremony and the inaugural address will be around noon Monday.

One other thing to expect in Monday's address: references to his first inaugural address four years ago.

Over the decades, re-elected presidents have used their second inaugurations to reaffirm goals they set for their first term and suggest how they might apply in the four years that lie ahead. In Obama's case, that would include references to the bad economy and the two wars he inherited in 2009 and how he has addressed them.

"The second inaugural looks back to the first," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, co-author of Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words.

One difference between Obama's two big speeches: States of the Union are annual events; second inaugurals are rare.

Only 16 of Obama's predecessors have given second inaugural addresses. (This number includes Grover Cleveland, who won two non-consecutive terms.)

Most second inaugural addresses tend to be forgettable, their distinctions trivial.

George Washington's second swearing-In, in 1793, generated the shortest inaugural address in history, a mere 135 words.

One model for Obama: Franklin Delano's Roosevelt second inaugural speech in 1937 after a first term devoted to New Deal programs designed to combat the Great Depression.

Four years later, Roosevelt reported that economic progress had been made, but more work needed to be done. In one of the most memorable phrases of any inaugural address, Roosevelt said, "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished."

When it comes to foreign policy, Obama has likened his situation to that of Dwight Eisenhower, who took office facing an unpopular war in Korea.

In his first term, Obama ended combat operations in Iraq and has authorized a troop withdrawal plan for Afghanistan.

If Obama is looking to give the greatest second inaugural address in history, he faces a high bar: Abraham Lincoln in 1865. The 16th president, weeks before his assassination, spoke eloquently of ending the Civil War "with malice toward none, with charity for all."

Both of Obama's immediate predecessors aimed high in the second inaugurations but faced difficulties in their second terms.

Bill Clinton, who faced Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate, said in 1997 that he and Congress should be "repairers of the breach" of a divisive time. That hope went by the boards with impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Obama faces a Republican-run House as he begins a second term.

In 2005, a re-elected George W. Bush devoted his second inaugural address to his freedom agenda, saying the United States would "seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

Four years later, Barack Obama would be elected president in part because of mounting frustration over wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as a collapsing domestic economy - issues he may well touch on in Monday's second inaugural address.

"He's going to lay out his vision for the second term and where America needs to go," Plouffe said on Fox. "Details and blueprints will be included in the State of the Union."